By Prince Osuagwu

A group of Nigerian reporters in Information and Technology, ICT sector, under the aegis of Information Technology Media Alliance has concluded plans to bestow President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and other eminent Nigerians with honours at a forthcoming event tagged the Nigeria Broadband Business Forum and ICT Centenary awards billed for October, 2014 in Lagos.

President Jonathan

The event, according to the group is in commemoration of the ICT development in Nigeria in the last 100 years. It will kick start with a conference with the theme: Broadband Business as Catalyst for Development and a Connected Nigeria and thereafter wind with an award night.

The wife of the President, Mrs. Dame Patience Jonathan is also on the honours list in recognition of her role as the ambassador of the Child Online Protection following her appointment by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) last year. The IT Media Alliance said there are several indisputable reasons, many of which are in the public space, why the president and his wife qualify for the centenary award.

Speaking on the event which coincides with the ground finale of the 1914 amalgamation of Nigeria’s former Southern and Northern protectorate under the previous British colonial masters, the Chairman of Information Technology Media Alliance, Mr. Aaron Ukodie stated that the conference and the Night of Excellence during which awards would be given to distinguished Nigerians is intended to celebrate the beautiful journey so far in the Nigerian ICT ecosystem.

He noted that the Nigerian ICT industry has been growing both in networth and size. Specifically, he stressed that Telecom has continued to be a major contributor to the nation’s GDP in a manner never before witnessed.

“For five consecutive years, ITU adjudged Nigeria as the fastest growing mobile market in the world, a testimony to the mobile telecom revolution which has seen a pervasive mobile telephony deployment across the country” underscoring the essence of the broadband focus for the conference, he admitted that in spite of the monumental success in mobile telephony, there has been limited deployment of broadband services.

However, he said that broadband has nonetheless become the oxygen of the 21st Century business environment. “It is against this background that we have convoked a conference to sustain the current and momentum of discourses and actions that would culminate in the cost-effective deployment of broadband.

This fittingly complements the efforts of the Federal Government as exemplified by the inauguration of the National Broadband Initiative,” he said.

The Award will specifically reward persons and corporate bodies who have distinguished themselves as regulators, users, equipment manufacturers, service providers or administrators since 1888 when the telephone first arrived on the shores of Nigeria.